A
system and method is shown for enabling a plurality of computers and associated
computer resources, some or all of which may be of heterogeneous configuration, to cooperatively process various applications such that the execution is transparent to the user regardless of where the application is actually executing. This distributed
applications architecture performs an information distribution service between multiple
transaction processing systems by working with a transaction processor via communication channels to other hosts within the network and a
dialog manager which uses a transaction processor interface to communicate with the transaction processor. The architecture employs a map service which provides an editor to create the maps for the application panels, a
compiler to generate the maps into a linkable form, and a linkable
interpreter which translates the linkable form into the screen presentation format for that platform. To distribute an application, the
source code for the procedures, view and panels are moved as a block to the new
system. This is possible because once the application
source code is complete, all
application logic,
user interface control tables, view definitions, and other application-specific tables for one transaction definition are packaged by the present invention in a single load module on the
system where the application will reside. The load module is then compiled using the target system's
compiler, link editor, and bind process. Thus, all environment-dependent variations of import / export are automatically integrated with the application at load module bind time, requiring no
source code changes.